Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays everyone. I hope these days have been full of cheer for all of you loyal readers. I'm doing something radical and skipping forward to the Christmas installment of Worst of the Night in an attempt to be timely. This doesn't mean I've forgotten about the weekend; it just means I'm really slow. Enjoy.

Worst of the Night:

Reggie loves to do the Charleston

The Nyets: Avery Johnson continued to disappoint Deron Williams by not being Jerry Sloan, while Deron Williams continued to disappoint Nets fans by not being Rajon Rondo. The result was a 17 point loss for the home team whose black uniforms seemed to anticipate their demise. The former Mr. Kim Kardashian did not play (something or other) which probably was not the best of moves days after allegedly stealing a bottle of Patron in a NYC night club and using it to pretend he was urinating on the dance floor. This may strike some as behavior unseemly for a professional athlete, but the clubs DJ's were reportedly harassing him with a block of songs from the far more famous man who's currently tapping the giant ass of Kim Kardashian, Kanye West.

Rondo and Pierce switched rolls for a day, with Rondo taking the role of top scorer and Wheezy leading the team in assists. Kevin Garnett kept things traditional by leading the team in rebounds on the day where he tied Charles Oakley for the 15th most games played in NBA history. Gerald Wallace must have been really impressed because he tried to pull the Big Ticket's pants off, or at least that's how KG interpreted it.

I don't know where in America you can jack somebody's pants off or shorts...I don't know what the hell was going on.

I don't know what the hell was going on either. Usually somebody has to lose their shorts before they can be properly jacked off, but I guess exceptions had to be made since it was national television on Christmas day. Hopefully I won't get the FCC breathing down this site's neck for displaying the video, but if ESPN can show it over Doris Burke's hot breathy announcing, then damn it so can we.




A little later, Gerald received a flagrant foul from Jared Sullinger, but I'm sure that had nothing to do with Wallace's attempts to scandalize America by turning KG into the Michael Fassbender of the NBA.

The Knicks: I don't know who was responsible for counting Tyson Chandler's turnovers, but I think anybody who actually watched this game would be shocked to find out that he only officially recorded 1. As far as I could tell, the majority of the passes thrown his way went right through his hands, but I guess more of those deflections must have found their way to teammates than I initially suspected.

Melo continued to demonstrate that he's the greatest third quarter player in the world, scoring 17 points in the period. Kobe and J.R. Smith were clearly jealous and did their best to keep up with a barrage of high difficulty jump shots. The Knicks probably would've won this game if not for two important factors: Raymond Felton ignored bone bruises on both hands on his way to 19 shots—he made 5 of them, while the Lakers finally had the bright idea of involving Dwight Howard in a pick and roll.

Pau Gasol ended the game with a big smile on his face after driving in from the three point line for a dunk, but the game began ominously for him when he hit a three pointer with 8 minutes left in the first quarter. The 7 footer caught three fever after that and attempted 2 more shots from deep in the first half, missing both. He must have received Kobe's patented death stare in the locker room at halftime, because he didn't launch any more threes in the 2nd half.

Kobe Bryant stole Christmas, surpassing Oscar Robertson to become the all-time top scorer for the holiday.

Do you have any idea how many reindeer had to die to make this jacket?

The Bulls: Christmas can have a funny effect on people sometimes. In the case of the Bulls, it caused them to trade in defensive excellence for an amazingly accurate impression of the 2008-09 Knicks. Nate Robinson led the team with 27 points, making him the only player to score more than 15 points for Chicago. Meanwhile, every Houston starter but Marcus Morris scored at least 20 points.

Denver: We are truly through the looking glass. Make that 14 straight games for the Clippers, shattering all previous winning-streaks for the generally inept franchise. The game had Billy Crystal, who was announcing because why the fuck not, speaking in tongues, or Yiddish—it can be so hard to tell. The Nuggets mostly seemed to be just there to provide a team to beat, and the game was not as close as their final deficit of 12 points suggested.

The Clippers were playing so well at times that it caused Magic Johnson to declare that showtime was back, just not for Mike D'Antoni and the other other LA team.

My eyes: ABC's rematch of the 2012 finals was a marvelously refereed example of sporting excellence that was completely without the blemishes of floppity floppers and never once made me want to jump through a plate glass window.



In case you couldn't tell, I was being sarcastic.

Lacktion:

Celtics-Nets: The Brooklyn Nets were bursting with holiday spirit, generously gifting the lacktion section 4 performances of pointlessness. MarShon Brooks kept on giving Joe Johnson the evil eye, while spending 6 minutes and 3 seconds on the floor and ending up with a +2 suck differential. Tornike Shengelia did him one worse with a +3 suck differential in 4 minutes and 50 seconds. Tyshawn Taylor made a more modest contribution with a +1 suck differential in 1:16, while Mirza Teletovic gave what he could spare with a trillion. 

Lakers-Knicks: Darius Morris treated viewers to some starting lacktion with a +4 suck differential in 6:54 that built up some nice suspense before Steve Nash checked in.

Rockets-Bulls: Daequan Cook prepared a 3.5 trillion for the disappointed denizens of Chicago. Meanwhile, Nazr Mohammed wasn't feeling festive in 2 minutes and 36 statless seconds.

* Shane Battier came amazingly close to a +11 suck differential in 23 and a half minutes. He was only saved from this wretched fate by blocking Kevin Martin with 1:21 left in the game.